Newgeography: The Luxury City vs. the Middle ClassIf you think you noticed this during the boom times, you were most likely not mistaken. In many cities in the US, the city is reserved as the exclusive province of the unattached - those with no children or grown children - who would merely consume the fabulous bounty of consumable goods and services the city would provide. As middle class families leave cities behind, only the poor and the affluent remain.

Newgeography.com: Euroburbia: A Personal ViewEurope has sprawling suburbs too, despite what romantic urbanists may wish to believe. Social stratification is alive and well for many of the same reasons it is alive and well in America.

September 13, 2009

The Curse of the Lack of Discipline: Where is the Line Drawn in Public Affairs?

The Reno Redevelopment Agency is broke. After having committed the City of Reno to a million dollars a year more in subsidies to the developers of the baseball stadium in Reno for the next decade, they have essentially run themselves out of the ability to take on anymore projects from a reliable funding source, ie, taxes that are levied as per the special Redevelopment District.

That’s sad, as we’re coming to learn, because there are a lot of projects that are on the table right now – and which may have to be dropped if someone can’t get real creative, real fast.

Perhaps one of the most important of such projects is the Facade Improvement Program, which was to focus on improving facades along a couple blocks worth (give or take) of Virginia Street frontage. Mike at Reno Realty Blog calls the street NVA in reference to North Virginia, with SVA being the opposite direction, a method of identifying the street this blog heartily endorses.

The approach that was taken was that the RDA would take on the project as a demonstration project, doing about a half million dollars’ worth of work, to improve one of the worst spots in downtown – what I call the “Center Block” – the west side of NVA between 2nd and Commercial Row. This blighted block has much former casino facade, papered over as liquor store and pawn shop facade. Today it’s worse still. There’s casino facade papered over as liquor store facade papered over as a bakery (granted the bakery just opened, and let’s all go and try some of this dude’s bread, post haste, and regularly I might add if he’s any good.)

This post started out being somewhat about the money the RDA doesn’t have, which is funny, because money the RDA could spend, if it keeps a few RDA employees, is all over the place – if they get smart about raising it. In particular the facade plan, which seems to be in limbo at the moment – recommended for reprioritization, could take advantage of CBDG funds. If it’s not the same thing, the property owners and small businesses inhabiting those properties could also qualify for SBA loans to secure financing for their individual storefronts.

This is where the RDA could shine. As a junction point between private VC, public bond and “A” loans, foundation money, and spillover tax revenue; and entrepreneurs, business owners and building and property owners in target districts.

One thing that’s been missing all along – a methodical, programmatic approach, is just one thing. Another thing is the lack of foresight with the allocation of funding resources to projects. Projects sit in the imagination of some plan or official for 25 years or more, and it’s frequently an emergency, or some stroke of luck which allows them to proceed. It’s not just the RDA that takes this approach. A few years ago some friends sold their house to escape an assessment district on their place to replace the sidewalks and resurface the streets in their neighborhood that would raise the property tax for the year by a considerable amount. The question most naturally springing to mind was, “Why wasn’t the City trickling this money into a fund over the past 20 years.”

It’s the same with so many projects, blighted properties, and missed opportunities in Reno today and over the years. This is one reason to celebrate that Reno is now committed to truly subsidizing the baseball project, the second phase of which is due to begin construction, the developers tell us, any day now.

I don't know how I feel about TIF. I'm not opposed to it, I guess. I'm not really in favor of it though because as I see it the problem isn't really one of a lack of public money. It's more a lack of private money and so something - and it's not lack of interest in either case, I think - is causing friction for business. I think redevelopment as it's being practiced in Nevada today is kind of a phony premise.